Lead:
At a time when frigidity is gradually becoming a reality, the public seems to be no longer interested in the crisis of the individual. But for every man trapped in ED, the pain is hard to get rid of. And in addition to imaginable psychological anxiety and pain. In recent years, the biggest difficulty for men suffering from ED is how to find the right treatment for themselves in a market that lacks the popularization and publicity of medical drugs.
It was like an antidote that was close in front of you but hard to touch. It is precisely under such pain points that a company is quietly popularized by men.
1. The "Viagra" that is difficult to start with
After drinking a little wine, your head is a little hot, and you think it's your chance. When you're ready, you tell her, "It's going to work tonight." She smiled.
You carry her to bed, pounce on her like a wolf, and for a moment you find that the world is still calm and undisturbed. She still smiled, but her tone was a little forced, "It's okay," she said. You start to get annoyed until the next day when you think about it. That day, you were sneaking around in the company searching for "what to do if you have impotence" on your mobile phone.
A dazzling array of advertisements for drugs and hospitals popped up on the page, such as tadalafil, sildenafil, dapoxetine, avanafil, ...... You start looking at the side effects and prices of the drugs, the best men's hospitals, the effectiveness and failures of the treatments. You end up scratching your hair and falling into a meltdown.
The above scene is the dilemma faced by 4 percent of middle-aged men. Today, erectile dysfunction (hereinafter referred to as ED) has become one of the most common diseases of the male reproductive system. In China, the prevalence of ED is about 40% in men older than 40 years. Despite this, due to the privacy of ED itself, many ED patients use self-medication or even "go with the flow", and some data suggest that more than 80% of affected men may be self-medicated.
After all, men who have really had ED know that the pain is not only powerless in bed, sometimes even walking into the pharmacy to get the drug they want is a kind of torture - before that, patients need to search for a lot of information, make detailed inquiries, and sometimes need to shop around to see which drug is of better quality, cheaper, and has fewer side effects.
The choice of drugs is not easy - anti-ED drugs have a long and short history in the mainland, the most well-known is "Viagra", that is, Viagra. At the end of the last century, Pfizer's sildenafil was launched because the brand name was Viagra, and after it was introduced into China, this drug was called Viagra by domestic consumers. In 2003, Eli Lilly and Bayer's tadalafil (Cialis) and vardenafil (Levitra) were launched one after another, and after the introduction of domestic drugs, they officially carved up the market of anti-ED drugs and became the "Big Three" in the treatment of ED. In 2013, Viagra, Cialis and Levitra had market shares of 58.8%, 34.6% and 6.6%, respectively. Until now, the "Viagra has arrived" often hung at the door of the pharmacy, which is a clue for many middle-aged men to cope with life in silence.
The entry of anti-ED drugs has regained the confidence of frustrated middle-aged men, but at the same time, because foreign original drugs have patents, foreign drugs have monopolized the pricing power of anti-ED drugs, and the price of anti-ED drugs has remained high.
In 2014, some media compared Viagra with gold, when a gram of gold was 400 yuan, but the price of a 100mg Viagra pill was 128 yuan, and 10 capsules of 100mg Viagra were 965 yuan, which was several times the price of gold - the real Spring Festival was worth a thousand gold, which doubled the economic pressure on domestic ED patients.
But the turning point came that year. The patent protection period of Viagra expired, and domestic pharmaceutical companies began to apply for generic drugs to seize the long-occupied 10 billion market. For sildenafil alone, there are more than 40 domestic pharmaceutical companies producing generic drugs, and there are countless brands under them. For pharmaceutical companies, anti-ED drugs are undoubtedly a blue ocean that is still rolling, but for drug users, in the face of such an increasingly large but somewhat mysterious, even legendary pharmaceutical market, it is difficult to start with drugs.
In 2014, when the patent protection of sildenafil expired, the Ma'anshan police cracked a major case involving the production and sale of counterfeit Viagra in provinces, cities and abroad, involving an amount of up to 440 million yuan. Two years later, the media successively exposed the big cases of making and selling viagra in many places, one of which was an elderly man who was unwell after eating and his blood vessels burst, and Yiwu, Zhejiang Province investigated and dealt with more than 1.8 million counterfeit cases......
In those years, Viagra symbolized desire, passion, and even happiness. It even created a kind of pop culture in the ancient Internet, giving everyone the opportunity to knock on the door of "sex". It's a fascinating and effective comfort that becomes a miracle, but because of the ups and downs of the market, it's hard to really feel at ease to take it.
Life is sometimes just waiting for the right Viagra.
2. The prominent encirclement of domestic generic drugs
What do patients expect from anti-ED drugs?
Quite simply, nothing more than effective, safe, and cheap.
The first thing that was met was "cheap". Domestic pharmaceutical companies began to imitate sildenafil after it expired, which completely knocked down the price of Viagra. When the first "domestic Viagra" was launched that year, the price of a single pill was 48 yuan, which was directly more than 60% lower than the original product, but despite this, such a price was still too high. In the following years, more pharmaceutical companies joined the price war, pulling prices down and impacting the status of foreign original drugs.
However, there are still a large number of fans of expensive original drugs, and data shows that until 2021, Pfizer's sildenafil ranked among the top three in the market share of anti-ED drugs. It's not that consumers are not interested in cheap pills, but they don't trust the quality of domestic generic drugs.
Many patients do not know much about generic drugs, and often rudely understand "generic" as "counterfeit", or have prejudices about domestic drugs, and let themselves fall into the hesitation of using drugs. In the past, due to the differences between generic drugs and the original drug process and quality control in the actual production process, even if the active ingredients are the same, the purity is still insufficient, which affects the efficacy. The lack of standards has allowed some domestic generic drugs with insufficient efficacy to enter the market.
But these perceptions are in the past. In the years when domestic pharmaceutical companies began to imitate Viagra, the generic drug market also ushered in a huge change.
As early as 2012, the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan for National Drug Safety" proposed "drug consistency evaluation". To put it simply, this standard is a high standard requirement that the state requires generic drugs to be consistent with the quality and efficacy of the original drug, and more specifically, "consistency in the whole process of management, consistency in intermediate processes, consistency in quality standards, etc." By 2016, Continental's evaluation of the quality and efficacy consistency of marketed generic drugs was in full swing. Domestic generic drugs have begun to enter a standard and supervised production environment.
At this time, the retail environment has also undergone earth-shaking changes, e-commerce platforms have impacted traditional offline retail, and Internet platforms have begun to carry out drug sales within the scope of supervision. At the end of 2022, with the implementation of the Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Drug Online Sales, drug business enterprises can further sell drugs through online platforms under the guidance of norms. This is undoubtedly good for the sales of anti-ED drugs, which can well protect the privacy of patients and do not have a psychological burden to buy drugs.
During this period, the deepening and development of the centralized drug procurement system also promoted the survival of the fittest of domestic generic drugs. Since then, the war between domestic anti-ED drugs has really begun, and it will test how companies can really provide patients with cheap, high-quality drugs, and make patients believe and pay for them willingly.
This change has provided an opportunity for companies with innovative strength and market insight to emerge, and frustrated middle-aged men have also begun to praise new domestic anti-ED drug brands. At present, domestic sildenafil has grown to more than 2 billion varieties, and the sales of domestic tadalafil will also enter the echelon of 900 million yuan.
The spring of domestic "Viagra" and ED patients has indeed arrived.
How is the "Internet celebrity" medicine made?
43-year-old Li Minghua (not his real name) still remembers the horror and loss of discovering out that he had ED. He said that even when he went to work, he was anxious. He began to quit smoking and drinking, put down socializing, and went for a run. But in bed, he still couldn't escape his wife's disappointed gaze.
"No, it's not necessary," said his wife. That was the most impressive blow to Li Minghua.
Can't forget it, he told himself. After nearly 1 year of procrastination, Li Minghua finally chose to go to the hospital. Doctors examined and examined him and confirmed that he had moderate erectile dysfunction. The doctor told him that this disease can be solved with the help of drugs, and to keep a cheerful mood, he suggested that he could use the original drug sildenafil, and gave him a reminder of medication.
He followed the advice. After taking the medicine, he found a state that had disappeared for a long time. He was happy, but he also found that domestic generic drugs on e-commerce platforms seemed to be cheaper. During the follow-up visit, he asked the doctor if this type of drug was as guaranteed as the original drug, and the doctor gave a "yes" answer.
He found the flagship store of Dekai Pharmaceutical's Yiai Medicine on Tmall, which was full of andrology drugs, and he clearly remembered that a box of 24 sildenafil tablets was less than 70 yuan, and the average tablet was less than 3 yuan. His first reaction was, "This is too cheap," and then he happily thought, "I don't have to buy medicine offline anymore."
The rise of domestic anti-ED generic drugs has benefited ED patients. It is not only the advantage in price, but more importantly, the sales and quality assurance of the e-commerce platform, which have made the sick men who were forced to "hide" in the past be respected.
Li Minghua's habitual love is a typical case. As a health brand incubated by Dekai Pharmaceutical in 2021, it has killed all sides on the e-commerce platform. Drugs for the treatment of impotence and premature ejaculation have been launched one after another, and in the "Double 11" in 2022, the sales of Xiai in a single day exceeded the million level. In JD.com, the Yiai brand won the first place in the sales list, and the Tmall flagship store of Yiai also entered the top three, and the main product sold more than 10 million pieces in half a year. By last year, the sales volume of Yiai was close to 100 million tablets, which can be called the "Internet celebrity" in anti-ED drugs.
Such sales first come from the quality assurance of habitual love. We have strong supply chain advantages and R&D advantages. According to the data, we have invested tens of millions of R&D expenses to study the process of raw materials and preparations of original drugs to ensure that they pass the consistency evaluation of products. In accordance with the guidelines for the development of ICH related international APIs, the R&D team separated nearly 40 process impurities and potential impurities involved in the production through technical means.
Li Huaming's personal experience is "fast". According to the results of an experiment by professional testing, the dissolution rate of the Yiai brand drug reached 86.2% within 5 minutes, which was higher than the 71.7% of the original drug brand of the same product, and far better than the other two domestic generic drug brands, and by the 30th minute, the dissolution rate of the Yiai drug reached 93.9%. It is important to know that the rate of dissolution means how quickly and to what extent it is absorbed by the body, which means that the efficiency of the release of properties outside the body is exceptionally high.
In addition, we carefully select GMP manufacturers in the production process, use good production equipment, reasonable operation procedures, perfect quality management and strict testing system have been recognized by the World Health Organization, and the entire production process has passed the authoritative production certification of the World Health Organization.
With the help of strong supply chain advantages and R&D capabilities, Yiai also has an absolute price advantage, with an average price of about 5 yuan per tablet, which is more cost-effective than the original drug and other generic drugs, which greatly reduces the pressure on patients, so it quickly occupies the market. The most important thing is that as a brand focusing on online drug retail, Xiai is largely close to the privacy protection needs of ED patients, and on the other hand, it also focuses on services, establishing electronic medical records for patients and providing physician consultation services for patients.
This is a blessing not only for men, but also for women and thousands of families. In this wave of domestic generic drugs, the "Internet celebrity" of habitual love, together with other domestic generic drugs, is breaking the pattern of the monopoly of original drugs in the past and helping people regain their original happiness.
Nowadays, the reduction of sexual life and the quality of sexual life have become a significant trend in many countries and regions, and the incidence of ED is also getting younger and gradually increasing - a report last year showed that ED is affecting half of Chinese mainland men, and the prevalence of Chinese men under the age of 30 is 20.85%. For the most natural human experience, fighting ED is a way to pursue happiness and joy, and the demand for domestic anti-ED is still calling for more responsible pharmaceutical companies to stand up.
The story isn't over yet. At a time when "sex" has become barren and pleasure seems to be getting harder and harder, ED patients need more good quality and cheap Viagra to repeatedly emphasize our existence as human beings and creatures. This is the revelation that a small pill has been boiling here for 20 years.